Warren F. Vander Wal, 78, formerly of Pollock, SD, died October 20, 2026 in the Strasburg Care Center. Graveside services will be held at 10:30am on Friday, October 23, 2026 at Spring Valley Cemetery, rural Pollock, SD.

Warren Fletcher Vander Wal was born on June 20, 1948, to parents Fletcher and Gertrude Vander Wal, at the Lowe Hospital in Mobridge, South Dakota, their third child and only son.

He graduated from Pollock High School, class of 1966. During his sophomore year of high school, he found a request for pen pals in a Teen magazine. It was there he found the girl who would be the love of his life, Bernice Louise Boone from New Philadelphia, Ohio. After writing for three and a half years, they met in person and were married the following year on his twentieth birthday. They made their home in Pollock, South Dakota before moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where their daughter, Laura Jean, was born the following year. At this time, they returned to the Pollock area and bought part of his grandparents’ farm where they lived for the next forty-three years, where sons Robert Fletcher and William Warren were added to the family.

Warren was a farmer at heart, but also worked as an over-the-road trucker, mechanic for Peterson Farms, foreman of the potato warehouse at Cattail Creek, and had even been the first employee of Grandma’s Kuchen.

Warren loved flying and even built his own plane which he flew to the airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He also built his own kayak and mandolin. He loved music, especially bluegrass, and he was able to attend several bluegrass festivals where he rubbed elbows with several of the best bluegrass musicians in the nation.

He attended Presbyterian Church and gave his heart to the Lord at their CE Camp. During the years he lived in Missouri, he followed the Lord in baptism at Bakersfield Full Gospel Church.

Grateful to have shared his life is his wife, Bernice, his children: Laura Jean of Bismarck, Robert (Landa) of Dickinson, and William (Lyndsi) of Fargo; grandsons: Daniel Olson, Aaron Vander Wal, Shawn Vander Wal; granddaughters: Alyssa Olson and Abigail Olson; six sisters: Susan (Doug) Lidstone of Minneapolis, Velma (Leroy) Van Vugt of Omaha, Pat Larson of Pollock, Carol (Harlow) Larson of Pollock, Louise (Wade) Acheson of Mobridge, and Betty (Duane) Dyk of Strasburg.

Preceding him in death were his parents, Fletcher and Gertrude Vander Wal; grandparents: Karl and Carrie Vander Wal, and Samuel Daniel and Cleora Simpson, and brother-in-law, Donald (Don) Larson.